A simple, effectual, and safe means of accomplishing these desirable results has long been known, and to a considerable extent practiced in some places. But until lately has been little known in the United States. Accouchers of the first respectability, and surgeons of great eminence, have in some peculiar cases recommended it. Within the last two years, a more extensive knowledge of the process has prevailed and its practice has been more extensively adopted. It is now made public through the medium of this book; and to those who deem its use expedient, may not only prevent much unhappiness and physical inconvenience, but will be of incalculable benefit to society. The great utility and importance of the use of this instrument, may be summed up under the following heads: 1st. That no married couple shall have more children than they wish to have and can maintain. 2nd. That no unhealthy woman shall bear children, that cannot be reared, and which endanger her own life in the parturition: “Women, for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder! and the punishment which is inflicted on her who destroys her child to escape reproach, is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the prostitute is irrecoverable doomed. Has the woman obeyed the impulse of unerring nature;—society declares war against her, pitiless and eternal war; she must be a tame slave, she must make no reprisals: theirs is the right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life of infamy; the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all return. She dies of long and lingering disease: yet _she_ is in fault, _she_ is the criminal, _she_ the froward and untameable child—and society, forsooth, is the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion from her undefiled bosom! Society avenges itself on the criminals of its own creation; it is employed in anathematizing the vice to day, which yesterday it was the most zealous to teach. “Young men, excluded by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society of modest and accomplished women, associate with the most vicious and miserable beings, and thus destroy those exquisite and delicate sensibilities, whose existence cold-hearted worldings have denied; thus they annihilate genuine passion, and debase that to a selfish feeling which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their body and mind become a hideous wreck of humanity; idiocy and disease are perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations suffer for the ignorance of their forefathers.”